Kawaii Crepe (Scraptastic Sketch)

It's time for another sketch over at Scraptastic.  I decided to modify the sketch to an 8.5x11 format just to change things up a bit.

It was so nice of mom to come into the city to attend Isabelle's Grade 9 graduation ceremony with me, as Darwin was out of town.  After the ceremony we asked her where she wanted to go for lunch.  Thankfully for mom and I she chose one of her favourite places, which wa also a place we had not yet been.  Kawaii crepe is delicious with a variety of crepe fillings to choose from.  Whether sweet or savory they all taste as delicious as they look.  We had 3 different fillings between the three of us: cookies & cream with strawberries, chicken caesar salad, and pulled pork.  It's a place I'll now need to take Darwin, so he can experience the deliciousness for himself.

I loved this card from the July Either Way Kit.  I knew when I saw the sketch, that this was the way I wanted to use it.  And how great is that ripped paper stamp?

A little more stamping and lots of buttons, and enamel dots to finish off the page.  Not too much, but not too simple, a great sketch to work with.

We'd love to see your take on Susan's sketch.  If you play along please come over to the blog and link up here for your chance at a Scraptastic gift card.

Thanks so much for stopping by today friends!

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Scraptastic Shares

I wanted to share a couple layouts that I had up over on the Scraptastic blog last week for Challenge Thursday.

First up is this one I made to remember our little Robin Family I had documented through my Instagram  account early this summer.

I just loved that chevron paper from the Crate Paper Close Knit collection.  I knew as soon as I saw it that I wanted to cut it apart and sew onto my background.

The challenge was to include a hidden element on your project.  Normally it would be journaling for me.  In this case, however I had some additional photos that I wanted to include on my layout.  The design I went with didn't allow for them to be exposed, so this was the perfect solution.

 Just love those resin flowers from Fancy Pants designs

Next up is this layout featuring my babies.

 The Jillibean polaroid frames are gorgeous.  The "always" frame had originally came blank.  I really wanted to create my title with the fames, so I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut the word into it.  You'll notice it's just a little misaligned, and that font is just slightly different.  Oh well.  That gorgeous flair is from the A Flair For Buttons Etsy shop.  I just love the burlap flair sets.

 This time my hidden tag included journaling only.  I added a little more interest to it by stamping it with the Never Tear Us Apart stamp set.

 Again with the resin flower love.

To see more of what our dt and members created with the October Kit, have a look at the Gallery.  You can see current and past kits here.

As you can see I love to stitch on my layouts.  My machine gets plenty more of a workout on paper than it ever does on fabric, save for the alterations, and occasional costume projects the kids may need. My friends over at Scrapbook & Cards today have an amazing contest running right now where one lucky winner will walk away with a brand spanking new machine.  The very gracious people at Janome have offered to gift one lucky reader with a Juno J1218 machine.  This baby is gorgeous, and would totally expand my stitching options.  I'm linking up this post in hopes that I may be that lucky winner.  To see more details on the machine itself and the contest hop over here.

Thanks so much for popping in today friends, hope you're off to a great week.

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Sketchy Thursday

It's that time once again at Scraptastic.  Susan created a fun sketch for us to work with, and the October Kit made it super easy and quick to create a layout for it.

I used a fun freebie cut file created by Juliana Michaels as my mat.  You can download the file here.

Here is the sketch that Susan created for us this month.

 Isn't that wood veneer card so cute?  It's actually from the This Life Noted Kit, I really wanted to save it to use in my Moments In Between Album, but it just looked so great on this layout, that I had to use it.

 Love these oversize letters from Fancy Pants.  I thought sanding them up a bit would be a nice touch to this layout.

The Never Tear Us Apart stamp set is awesome, I especially love the hearts.  I used gold embossing powder to create this one.

So many great products in this kit, I'm just itching to play with it some more.  You can check it out for yourself here.  Playing along with the sketch could win you a $20 gift certificate to the Scraptastic shop.  You can check out what the rest of the dt created, and link up your own creations here.

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Going Simple with Scraptastic

The I Found A Boy Kit at Scraptastic Club sold out pretty quickly, and I can show you why.  I have a couple of layouts to show you today.

I decided to try something a little different this month and go a little flatter than usual with my Augusts kits.  For this first layout, I really wanted to use a design that incorporated almost all of the patterned papers that came in the kit.  I just love the way they all coordinate so well.  Zero journaling on this one, which is a little different for me, but I thought the title and the photos were really all this layout needed.

For this layout I used mainly the I Found A Boy Add On Kit.  I thought it would be fun to cut up this sheet and stick the squares back in place to add depth to the "flatter than usual" design.

Journaling reads: "It was a little disappointing when our VACATION turned into a STAYCATION.  We made the best of it, by taking the girls to do things we wouldn't normally like Wall Climbing and getting their first pedicure.  August 2013" 

I used the stamp form the Classy girl kit to emboss onto a scrap piece of cardstock in the centre of the photos.  

See, pretty simple, but still gets the story recorded, and in an even faster time frame than I'm use to.  These kits are so jam packed with product that I've made 4 layouts, and two cards.  I even combined a bunch of the bits and pieces with my This Life Noted kit to create 2.5 spreads.  I have so enjoyed working with these brighter, bolder, more masculine colours.  The stamps are great too.  It appeared at first that the kit had a more masculine bent to it, but once I started working with it, it became increasingly clear that the colours were great for many of the photos I had ready to be scrapped.

I'll have the rest of my projects to share with you soon.  In the meantime hop over here to the gallery for inspiration from the rest of the Scraptastic DT and our members.  You can follow along with the blog here.

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Out On The Town

That's the name of the July Kit I chose to work with this month at Scraptastic.  Here is my first layout created with the kit.

This photo is my dear Miss Maggie holding a nest we found in our tree this Spring as we were yard cleaning.  I just love the colours in it so much, I know that I'll scrap it again before summer is over.

Here are a few close ups for you:

That stitched looking stamp is definitely one of my favourites ever

Notice the stamp overlapped onto the photo?  No biggie for me.

Really love those coloured mini tags

So many stickers, embellishments, stamps to play with.  To read more about the product I used in the kit, please hop over to the Scraptastic Blog to read all about it.

I also wanted to invite you to our 3rd Birthday Celebration the first weekend in August.  Hope to see you there.

  Thanks a bunch for popping in today. Pin It

I'm Diving In

If you've been following me since last January you will remember that I tried my hand at Project Life, or The Moments In Between as I called it.  That lasted a mere 3 weeks.  Our local photo lab closed down for renos for 5 weeks, and I let that totally throw me off course.

Well I'm back at it.  Largely due to the fact that Scraptastic Kit Club has released a brand new, super fun Project Life collection of cards, stamps, flair, and other fabulous little bits.  I fell in love with the product, and was especially inspired by the way I saw others on the DT using the kit.  Here is what I did a couple of weeks ago (it's been so crazy around here I haven't had the tim to post it until today, sorry).

Because I only jumped on the bandwagon late in the game I have not used the June Kit from Scraptastic, which sold out before reveal day, by the way.  Instead I used an older Scraptastic kit that I loved, but had only bits and pieces left.  That's another great thing about PL, it allows you to use up a collection almost in it's entirety, as you don't require large pieces of paper or cardstock, and there is always room for bits and pieces of embellishments throughout the page.  This kit featured the gorgeous Pink Paislee Portfolie collection.

Left Side:

 The only "issue" I have with Project Life is photographing the layouts.  The pape protectors create such a glare when photographing and sometimes the image itself looks warped.  The only alternative that makes sense to avoid the glare would be to lay each piece out separately side by side to make it look like it was in the protector and photograph that way.  That system is far too much work in my opinion, and would be much less effective for me as I generally photograph my layouts outside on the front step for better light.  Can't you just see me running all over my front lawn chasing down little 3x4 pictures and journal spots, haha.  Plus I figure my readers are intelligent enough to know what the photo really looks like in real life.  Thanks in advance for letting me off the hook on this one.  As you can see I'm really liking the EK Success label maker for this project.

Right Side:

Lots of journaling here, it's the most important part in my opinion, with some stamping using the Scraptastic Stamps that came in the June kit.  Ranger's Archival Ink is THE BEST for stamping directly onto your photos by the way.  Some tags from Chic Tags (perfect for PL too), and some bits and pieces of other goodies, and I'm done.

So who else is on the Project Life bandwagon.  I'd love to pop by and see how you are doing with yours.  Leave me a link, and I'll leave you some love.

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Seriously So Beautiful

This time of year is always full of Dance Competitions and Dance Recitals in our home.  That translates into a lot of money, driving, waiting, make up, and the best part costumes.

I caught a few pix of my girls and their good friend just before leaving to compete in the Manitoba Dance Festival.  Their costumes were so cute, and they looked so beautiful that I just had to take some photos before we left.

This bright and cheery paper collection provided the perfect amount of cheeriness to accommodate the photos.  Put them together with some equally cheery Chic Tags, and I've got one happy layout to remember this year's Tap costume, and how far the girls have come with their dancing over the past two years.

See that Love 2"Circle?  It's a free cut file.  Albert has been creating and releasing them every Friday for the past number of weeks.  You can download this one, and several other great designs for your Silhouette Cameo right here

The "celebrate" strip is from the Birthday Cake Snip'em Tags.  Such a great value that sheet is.

It can be hard to tell from straight on, but I've added quite a bit of dimension to this layout by having my photo and embellishments placed at different heights.  I find this method works really well when I have several items clustered into a small space.

Hope you're feeling inspired to create something great today!  Getting your hands on some Chic Tags would certainly be a great start.  Head over here to check out the Birthday Collection for yourself.

Have a wonderful weekend friends, and thanks for popping in today!  I'll be back next week with some big news I've been keeping secret for a while now. Pin It

So Yummy

Have you tried the Oreo Birthday Cake cookies?

I think they only come out once a year.  They are hard to find here, and only have about a kagillion calories each, but oh man are they ever delicious.  Like opening a birthday party in a bag, I tell you.  They smell like cotton candy and look so happy with their little bits of colourful candy.  I loved them so much I just had to create a layout all about em.

This was a dt project for Cre8tive Cre8tions.  I really like to document out of the ordinary things in my scrapping.  Of course my family is super important to me and generally the main focus of my scrapping, but I think it'll be great to look back through my albums in 20, 30, maybe even 40 years, and see a reflection of all the little things that make me, me.  My love of sweets definitely deserves a place among the many, many pages of the people, hobbies, and places I love.

I used some of the funky yellow patterned paper from the shop, and well as a few of the stamps.  The "oh yes" stamp is a Technique Tuesday design.  And notice the resist design in the background?  I'll have a tutorial on how to make your own resist coming up on the Cre8tive Cre8tion blog soon.  Keep an eye out for it.

Here is one of the many, many fabulous flair buttons Andrea designs.   Check them out in the shop here.

I love, love that triangle stamp.  I have a hard time NOT using it on any of my Cre8tive Cre8tions projects.  The 2 smaller stamps are also from that same set.  You can see the rest in that collection here in the shop.  And see that fabulous houndstooth paper?  It's actually tissue paper that came in some scrappy packaging.  I loved it so much, I just had to save it to incorporate into a project.

You can see the original post of this project on the blog.  You'll also be inspired by many other fabulous designs while you're there.

Thanks for stopping by today.  I'll be back tomorrow with a Chic Tags project to share with you. Pin It

Blogapalooza Style!

Welcome to our Hop!

Chic Tags has teamed up with Media Butterflies to bring you a fantastic blog hop today.   There are many, MANY prizes and FREEBIES up for grabs along the way so be sure to visit each blog along the way.  It all ends at the Chic Tags blog, with  one amazing grand prize.  Veronica is so incredibly wonderful, and gracious, and she is extending that in a big way to one lucky hopper this week.  If you have arrived here from Corinne's blog then you're on the right track.  If this is your first stop on our hop, you'll want to go back to the Chic Tags blog to get your line up and follow along.

I have a layout using the recently released Road Trip Tags to share with you today.  The collection is perfect for all the photos I have of our recent trip to Calgary & Banff, Alberta for Spring Break.

I captured this shot while riding the gondola up Sunshine Mountain for the first time.  It's always so peaceful in the gondola.  There are barely any words spoken as everyone is always taking in the awe inspiring beauty of the magnificent snow capped mountains, the tall, full, beautiful spruce trees, and the glorious sunshine streaming all around. 

Despite the breath taking beauty there is a small bit of fear and anxiety as I anticipate the huge, steep hills that both terrify and electrify me at the top.  Journaling reads: I'm always a mix of excitement and anxiety as we go up the gondola.  So much beauty all around - but such big hills await."

To achieve that 3D effect on the Number Tag, I simply fussy cut out the arrow and used 3D foam adhesive to pop it up in the same spot it was cut from.

How about a giveaway?  One lucky winner from my blog will win themselves a package of Chic Tags recently released Birthday Cake collection.

Simply leave me a comment, along with your email address, and I will draw a winner on Thursday at 11:59PM EST.  All winners will be announced on the Social Media Butterflies blog on Friday, May 3rd.  Good luck!

Your next stop along our hop is Ellie.  Thanks for stopping by today, and playing along with us. Remember there are several prizes, and freebies along the hop, so be sure to stop at every blog along the way.  Happy Hopping friends!

Tags Used:

Road Trip Icons

Road Trip File ATCs

Road Trip Note Clips

Road Trip Number Tags

Road Trip Cards

Road Trip Snip'em Tags

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5th Monday Change Up

Another month with 5 Mondays....that means a change up for all of us at LGS.  This week we were to choose a colour pallet, and a sketch from anywhere that appealed to us.

This is the colour combo I went with.

For the sketch, I chose another one of Kristine's fabulous sketches from her latest book Creating With Sketches Vol 2.

And this is my layout

This was from our quick trip to Mexico in February.  I'd go back in a heart beat.  Journaling reads  "Just you and me away for OnX related work?  Best 4 day getaway ever.  The resort was A-mazing, and the evening events were so well done.  The only downer was the EPIC sunburn you got the last day.  Two hours in the water will do that to a person.  Feb 2013"

Hop on over to the blog to see how the rest of the team was inspired this week.  Hope you link up your own creation.  We always come by to leave love for those who do :) Pin It